Following a couple of years of tradition, we will, at 32c3, interpret
all the talks.
Yeah, all of them. Live. German-English, English-German.
For you as a participant that means:

You can listen in on the streams by either selecting the appropriatestream, or by changing the stream audio channel (if your player allows).If you are on the Eventphone DECT network, you can dial in to variousstreams: 8011 for Saal 1, 8012 for Saal 2, 8014 for Saal G, and 8016 forSaal 6.

But that’s not all. In order pull this off, we need help. Never tried ?
Don’t worry, we’ll help you to find out if you’re talented. Expert
interpreter? Even better. So if you speak great English AND German
please contact us via e-mail: lingo-content@lists.ccc.de
or via twitter: c3lingo.
We usually meet twice per day, so don’t worry if you miss a meeting.
Just register at the heaven and ask for guidance.

Oh and if you use our services and like what we do, please let us know.
If you don’t like what we do, please tell us how you think we can improve.

Friday, 25 December 2015

After having many people ask about the screen printing machine, I figured I should do a demo, which turned into a class, and a few members got to learn a lot about screen printing, and how they can use the vinyl cutter to prep screens for printing.

I’ve got a post on my own blog about the demo, but I figured I’d add a photo of some of the results. Above is a shirt printed by one of our members, and below is a poster I printed for our “Wall of Stuff” in the lobby.

Dear Congress visitors and those who didn’t make it: Like in the previous years, the Video Operation Center will provide you with live streams and recordings of all main lecture halls (1, 2, G and 6) and the stage at Sendezentrum. As usual, you’ll find the video and audio streams at http://ift.tt/1OROBtu and the recordings at http://ift.tt/1Po4dGH. We also publish to our YouTube Channel media.ccc.de to cater to those with broken playback devices. We’ll continually be publishing the recordings there during Congress. Please avoid linking other channels which reupload our work (with ads).

If you are unable to join us at the CCH you can also participate in 32C3 remotely as part of Congress Everywhere and meet up at a hackerspace to watch the streams, drink some Mate and ask questions via IRC or Twitter.

Like at the previous Congress and this year’s Camp, all videos will be produced and published in HD and we try hard to ensure the best image quality and correct metadata on the files. Thus, we ask you not to record the streams (or at least not to publish such recordings), as those do not live up to the standards we set for our recordings. For the time between a talk and when we publish the recording, you can use the Relive system. We wrote more on the topic of stream dumps in this blog post.

We also did some upgrades with the live subtitles. They should now work on more devices and also when watching the video stream in fullscreen mode. The subtitles team will focus this time exclusively on halls 1 and 2 and wants to cover those 100%. In both halls the live subtitles can be watched on two screens in the front rows as well as on an arbitrary device via a web frontend. For this Angels are still wanted, both for live transcription and as responsible contact person for a hall.
Twitter: @c3subtitles
IRC: #subtitles auf hackint.org

Even for regular visitors the CCH building with all it’s corridors, foyers, and halls can be a hard to navigate maze. Thankfully some hacker was too lazy to think about how to get someplace and thus built the first congress indoor navigation system.

In order for your favourite places to be found c3nav needs your help. Go to the project’s github page and create a pull request with your favorite place’s position. Or drop them a tweet to get in touch. And then you can create a QR code encoding that position, hang it up and every visitor can find out exactly where she is by just scanning that QR code.

If you own an Android device you can also install the c3nav app from F-Droid and Google Play or as .apk and use wireless location instead of scanning QR codes to enter your current position. The app also supports sharing of routes and positions, which is really great if you want to help someone finding you. Just send them a c3nav link with your current position. You can also add your favourite places as a quick link to your homescreen, so you can find your way to them with a single touch.

Well, isn’t that pretty cool? Unfortunately it seems like iOS doesn’t offer a wireless scan API, so some hacker has to take a look at that.

Since its inception in January 2015, Johnson County Library’s Listen Local project has featured more than fifty of the Kansas City area’s finest songwriters, composers and musical noisemakers. As I wrote back in March 2015, the overarching goal of Listen Local is to help educate our community on the breadth of talent in our collective backyards – everything from rock, pop, folk and blues to contemporary classical, experimental, electronic, hip-hop and jazz – and to do this in a way that aligns with Johnson County Library’s strategic plan.

Two questions lay at the heart of this project:

When fewer and fewer artists are producing and selling physical CDs of their work, how does the library collection best represent the rich diversity of original music being made locally?

In the absence of a dedicated digital platform to provide streaming or downloadable local music, what can Johnson County Library do to help spread the word about these artists and connect our community with their work?

Listen Local is the first step toward addressing these questions. There are serious advantages to offering a digital resource over a purely physical CD-based music collection. We’re able to feature artists regardless of whether or not they have the ability or resources to mass produce a compact disc. We’re also able to provide, through interviews with the artists, some insight into the creators and the experiences behind their creations. A great by-product of this project is that artists often offer copies of their CDs to the Library. This is a great example of how a perceived limitation—not being able to build a satisfactory CD collection of local music—led to a creative solution.

Listen Local averages between 300 and 400 visits a week, making it one of our most successful blogs. Sharing new posts through social media not only alerts library users to new content, but the artists themselves regularly share these updates, bringing their friends, family, and fans to the library website. In addition to an interview and embedded links to music, every artist post features personal recommendations from our catalog, tying everything back to the collection. Another tie-in is our monthly Listen Local performance series, where featured artists perform for an hour or so in one of our thirteen locations.

The response to this project has been overwhelmingly positive. Here are some of the comments we’ve received so far:

“Thank you for this opportunity. Seriously this is a much needed thing you are doing for artists.”

“This interview series is awesome. I loved going back and reading the previous posts. What a great thing for the community!”

“I checked out Listen Local and feel honored to be a part of it! It really helps up and coming artist get their name out there.”

Since January, we have featured a wide variety of songwriters and composers, from high schoolers to senior citizens. For example, immensely talented teens like Grant Sharples, Bailey West, Kate Cosentino, Isaac Barkley, Kate Rose and Gracie Schram, all in the early stages of their music careers, sit alongside more established, and in some cases internationally-recognized, artists like Mara Gibson, Calvin Arsenia, Thom Hoskins and Ingrid Stolzel. We’ve included groups like the Midwest Chamber Ensemble and their Composer-In-Residence Joseph Kern, the wacky-and-educational Electric Needle Room and the highly respected jazz ensemble Shades of Jade. Through Listen Local we are creating a growing resource that strives to represent the richness and diversity of the Kansas City area music scene.

Bryan Voell is currently the Local Arts Librarian for the Johnson County (KS) Library. He received his MLIS from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2007 and has worked for public, academic, and research libraries in various capacities since 1997. He is also a collage artist and you can see more of his art here.

Today’s feature comes to us from Kristy Bowen, Co-Curator of the Aesthetics of Research project at Columbia College Library in Chicago. We were so excited to hear about this project, which explores the library as an incubator for creativity through exhibitions, events, and other “shenanigans” as Kristy says! Enjoy! ~Laura

by Kristy Bowen

Initiated in early 2014, The Aesthetics of Research, in residence at the Columbia College Chicago Library, is an ongoing series of exhibits, events, and other shenanigans dedicated to exploring the role that libraries play in artistic process, creative community building, and resource-sharing in the arts.

The Aesthetics of Research art vending machine. Photo provided by Columbia College Library.

Founded by library Access Department staff members Jennifer Sauzer and Kristy Bowen, both alumni of the college and artists themselves looking for a way to bridge their own artistic practice with their love of libraries, the program has grown from a small rotating gallery-style exhibit of work and artists’ bibliographies into a multi-platform entity, which includes not only a blog (aestheticsofresearch.com) devoted to exploring the intersections of creativity and research, but also ongoing initiatives in the campus library, including art vending machines, a Zine Exchange and The Library Sketchbook Project, a collection of volumes scattered throughout the library to collect and display student work.

Aesthetics of Research Book Wrecking workshop. Photo provided by Columbia College Library.

This fall, in conjunction with Chicago Artists Month, the Aesthetics of Research sponsored their first annual ARTCACHE event (an art exhibit/scavenger hunt/geocache) hidden in the library and accessible by clues using available online resources. With the goal of nurturing a creative community anchored in the library, the program has also sponsored a multitude of other campus events, including a week of LGBTQ community-focused programming, a series of informal How-To workshops devoted to art & craft-making, as well as A Little Indie Press Fair, highlighting the diverse wealth of Columbia-related indie publishing–literature, zines, comics, and book arts. Future plans include a Holiday Artists Tree featuring work from CCC artists, as well as a month long February program celebrating Surrealist Andre Breton’s birthday, with a number of Surrealism inspired creative games and activities scattered throughout the library.

Aesthetics of Research exhibition. Photo provided by Columbia College Library.

With the recent addition of another Access staff member to the team, Joy Thornton, whose specialty is music, they are also looking toward opportunities to add musical and performance oriented programming to the roster in the coming year, as well as foster relationships with faculty for collaborative initiatives reinforcing the campus library as a creative and generative space.

But in the age of shrinking library budgets and cuts to public funding, how do librarians make these projects sustainable and successful?

But in the age of shrinking library budgets and cuts to public funding, how do librarians make these projects sustainable and successful? Do new arts initiatives require that librarians and libraries do more with less? And–from our perspective as a partner in these projects–how can we help?

In our experience with Madison PL’s Yahara Music Library and Edmonton PL’s Capital City Records, a few factors are critical to success. For one, buy-in from library management and local government is essential. As Guy Hankel explains about his experience managing the Yahara Music Library, the project relies on the support of “forward-thinking management that see value in [Yahara], and understand how it fits in not only with the library’s purpose and mission, but also with the city’s cultural plan.” Staff needs to be on board too, as they help integrate digital collections with existing library technology and teach communities about new resources. Alex Carruthers, who manages Capital City Records at EPL, notes that CCR is “included in the yearly goals of a number of different departments and everyone is excited about it and excited to help.” The success of these projects also rests on support from their communities, which, according to Alex and Guy, has been easy to secure. “Once people discover [Yahara],” Guy says, “they immediately recognize the value and connections it affords.”

Once people discover [Yahara], they immediately recognize the value and connections it affords.

Enthusiasm, though, is not enough. It takes work to build and sustain these projects. Alex’s role at EPL as the Digital Public Spaces Librarian is a great example of sustainable support in the form of a dedicated staff position. Yet as Rabble moves forward on projects with new partner libraries, we’re finding that many institutions face significant challenges in allocating ongoing staff time and funding.

…we’re working hard to give librarians tools that make project management easier.

So, what are we doing to help? For starters, we’re working hard to give librarians tools that make project management easier. All of our development work happens in conversation with librarians to ensure that the tools we build are both useful and usable. MUSICat admin tools support every aspect of library collection development, from submission calls and jurying, to collection of media, metadata, and site content, to licensing and publishing. When we build those tools right, they save librarians a significant amount of time; it’s much, much easier, for example, to get fifty musicians to sign licenses online than to get fifty signatures down on paper.

Screenshot: the admin side of Capital City’s local music platform

But technology has its limits, and MUSICat can’t magically replace librarian labor. Nor should it.

But technology has its limits, and MUSICat can’t magically replace librarian labor. Nor should it. New digital art initiatives like Yahara and Capital City Records are exciting because of the connections they form between virtual and physical spaces and among musicians, libraries, and communities. Technology is certainly important to these projects. Websites that are easy and fun to use go a long way toward encouraging folks to engage in these new collections. But technology itself is not the point—the music is.

The Balweg Gallery at Madison Public Library.

Perhaps most importantly, we can help by being vocal advocates for public libraries themselves. In particular for a tech startup like Rabble, we need to acknowledge that online collections cannot, and should not, replace brick-and-mortar libraries that bring communities together and work towards narrowing the digital divide. Nor can projects like the Yahara Music Library and Capital City Records succeed outside of institutions with robust public funding. As librarians in the twenty-first century continue to re-imagine the scope of services they provide to their communities, those of us who partner and work with libraries owe it to them to state these things, and state them often.

Want more?

For more posts from the Rabble team on their projects, philosophy, and software-as-service model for MUSICat, check out our ongoing series HERE.

Lisa Hollenbach is a Ph.D. candidate in English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. As a 2015-2016 Public Humanities Fellow at Rabble, she loves finding ways to make libraries noisier. She lives in Madison, Wisconsin, and recently completed a dissertation about the poets, independent record labels, FM radio networks, and readers and listeners that made poetry central to the sound of dissent in the 1950s and 1960s.

Kelly Hiser is co-founder and CEO of Rabble, a startup dedicated to empowering libraries to support and sustain their local creative communities. Kelly holds a Ph.D. in music history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and embraces work at the intersections of arts, humanities, and the public good.

In the course of the 32C3 a cinema nearby is going to show the documentary film „Democracy – Im Rausch der Daten“ (mp4) on December, 29th. The Cinema is in a walking distance of about fifteen minutes away from the CCH, near the University of Hamburg. There is no need to worry about the German title, the audio will mostly be mixed between English, German and other European languages and there will be English subtitles.
Following the screening there will be a Q&A-Session with Ralf Bendrath, one of the protagonists in the film and a staff member of Jan Philipp Albrecht, Member of the European Parliament.

The film captures the work of the chief negotiator Jan Philipp Albrecht, MEP, and Viviane Reding, MEP, as well as other stakeholders and participants during their work in the conference hall, on the corridors and in debates with many lobbyists in Brussels. Who makes the laws in Brussels and how? Who tries to ensure which kind of interests? Director David Bernet gives an inside view into the political process about the new data protection law in the EU, a topic which concerns us all.

Gathering point:
In front of the CCH, at the Fairy dust rocket at 17:15.

Gathering point: Fairy Dust.

Who doesn’t already have a cinema ticket or reservation should come to the gathering point. Nevertheless it’s better to get a reservation directly from the cinema (see below).
At 17:30 we walk together from the gathering point to the Abaton cinema.

ticket reservation:
Price: 8 EUR, for 32C3 visitors: 7,50 EUR.
To get the reduced 7,50 EUR price, show your 32C3 ribbon at the cinema’s cash desk.
We’ll also give a few free tickets to 32C3 visitors, favored pupils, students, etc. at the gathering point at the CCH.

Tickets can be bought directly at the cinema’s cash desk from now on or online.
Ticket reservation via telephone (Englisch and German): +49 40 41 320 320, Mo-Fr starting at 15.30 until nearly 22.00, Sa+Su starting at 13.30. Reservations have to be bought at the cinemas cash desk, at least 15 minutes before the film starts. Because of the queue at the cash desk, better be there 30 minutes before the film starts.

Monday, 21 December 2015

There are still various reasons to experience the Congress from a safe distance. Family, job, travel expenses or this year again, no ticket. We are very sorry but the capacity of the building is limited. But we invite all interested people to attend the 32C3 via Congress Everywhere. Watch the streams, participate via twitter or IRC, celebrate your own Hackcenter experience, drink Tschunk, cook together and have a good time.

You can ask a question to a speaker via IRC or Twitter, you can listen the audio streams and the simultaneous translations via phone (also SIP). You can join the 32C3 network via VPN. You can dispatch a signal angel to an area in the CCH. For an online interactive coming together just use the IRC-channel #32C3-everywhere at hackint.

No 32C3 location in your city? Create a new Congress Everywhere space and add the location in the wiki. During 29C3 we had 34 places in 9 countries, last year even so 31. This year we are very happy to say hello to the already announced spaces in Graz (Austria), Antwerp (Belgium), Sofia (Bulgaria) and in Germany: Berlin, Bochum, Darmstadt, Düsseldorf, Erfurt, Freiburg, Heilbronn and Siegen.

Hackspace director Rob Mackenzie holds a Raspberry Pi. New versions are just $5 and have 512MB of SDRAM, a micro-SD card slot, a mini-HDMI socket for video output and micro-USB sockets for data and power. (Chris Corday, CBC)

CBC news recently interviewed some of our members about all the cool things you can do with a Raspberry Pi from setting up a computer to building your own photo booth, pinball machine, and loads more. And now, with the new Pi Zero, you can set up your own computer for around $5. Don’t forget to come on down to one of our FREE open nights to learn about RPis and all the other things we do at VHS.

Jon Grieman is using the Raspberry Pi as the brains behind a pinball machine he’s developing at Vancouver Hackspace (Chris Corday, cbc)

Luke Cyca, a Hackspace member showing off his camera that looks old fashioned but is powered by a Raspberry Pi, for self. Photo courtesy of CBC.